Oh. I don’t think there’s any comparison. I think that the idea that there is is way overblown and should be debunked easily if anybody looks at history and what was at stake in the whole Watergate investigation.

Well, you can’t control that. We don’t worry about the outcome anyway. We want the special counsel to do his job as soon as possible so that we can get this off the country’s radar screen and get on with what my husband is trying to do for the country.

I don’t know what he’s going to be doing for three years, but obviously we want him to do his work and do it as expeditiously as possible.

It’s not even a scandal-it’s not a scandal. A failed land transaction.

I’m very sad about it. But I also have a full life to live. I’m still my husband’s wife, I’m still Chelsea’s mother. I’m still involved in a lot of other activities that are important to me and my family. So I don’t really get the luxury of expending too much energy being angry with people who are being unfair and untruthful.

I don’t know. I think that mistakes were made along the way in handling this. I have learned a lot about the needs of the media and how they kind of make stories important. I suppose that in today’s atmosphere any unanswered questions are going to be grist for the mill.

I’ve tried to learn a lot about suicide and particularly about depression ever since Vince’s death-a lot of us here in the White House have. We’ve passed around books. We don’t have any answers either. But we don’t presume to try to make up answers. I just want this to be put to rest for his family’s sake and for the sake of all of us who were his friends. It is extremely painful to have this USE d as a political football by people. It is really unfair to his family particularly. But I guess I now understand why, in the face of a tragedy. some people will want to make up their own answer because they can’t deal with what are often life’s unanswerable mysteries.

Oh, sure. Hindsight’s always 20-20. 1 never would have participated in the investment in the first place. Of course, I would have tried to get everybody to focus on it sooner and earlier to try to deal with. So I think that of course I made mistakes. That’s part of the learning process you go through when you’ve never been accused of doing anything wrong before.

I have a big thing about it. I really have been pulled kicking and screaming to the conclusion that if you choose to run for public office you give up any zone of privacy at all. I get my back up every so often about even having to answer questions that I don’t think are in any way connected with the fact that my husband is in public life. That’s what’s going to be concluded about all this-people are going to spend millions and millions of dollars and they’re going to conclude we made a bad land investment.

People have been doing that to women in this position since Martha Washington. I was not the first to testify before a congressional committee, I was not the first to be criticized by the press, I was not the first to have issues that I was involved in questioned or attacked. I look at what was said about Eleanor Roosevelt. There’s always the possibility that no matter what you do you’re going to be criticized. I do think that the fact that I am involved in an issue [health care] of such magnitude with so many interests at stake has raised the visibility of my role and has caused some to question it for their own purposes.

I think that we have one of the most collegial, supportive White House environments I have ever read about. Does that mean everybody agrees with everybody else 100 percent of the time? Absolutely not. In fact, the president wouldn’t want us around if that were the case.

I think that’s right.

B_NEWSWEEK POLL_b What is your opinion of Hillary Clinton? CURRENT 38% Favorable 42% Unfavorable 2/94 50% Favorable 29% Unfavorable THE NEWSWEEK POLL, MARCH, 1994